a psychogeographic map of hochkamp's hochsitze

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About the Project | Book

Front Cover

Hunting the Soul of Winter is a walking art project that explores relationship to place. Set in Hochkamp, a tiny village in East Germany over two winter months, the project employs the practice of psychogeography to inquire into the themes of soul, death,embodiment, connectedness, and regeneration. By using displacement in a foreign country as a starting point, it seeks to mimic the sense of social and environmental estrangement experienced in many contemporary cultures, in order to find tools for reconnection. The project circles a series of questions- what role does sensual intuition and instinct play in our increasingly cerebral, sedentary societies? How can we use these senses, as well as walking itself, to recreate our relationships with self, others and our environments? The exploration of these questions highlight that sense of place is not a passive process whereby we find ourselves located somewhere, but rather an evolving, fluid and generative reciprocal relationship with our environments and communities.

This website acts as a kind of map, documenting the process of the project and influences along the way. I also took photographs of the hochsitz (hunting seats) during my walks as symbolic waypoints in my exploration of the key concepts. These photographs appear in an accompanying pocket book that is self-published, not-for-profit and made-to-order. Click here if you’d like to purchase a copy.